This Study Was Examined Way Back Since The Mid-1800S. Many

This article is a great article that relates to African Americans seeking mental health treatment at lower rates than whites. The article states that this disparity can be attributed to attitudes toward services, alternate coping, and differences in care. This article also illuminates biases in counseling.

“African Americans have the worst health profile. Disparities in health status are well documented and widely known. However, research on race, ethnicity, and health is controversial. The reason for this is probably linked to the thorny role that race has played in American history and contemporary culture. Because of this history, race engenders emotion, and emotion is the antidote to rationality. Some have called for the end of research on race and health” (Isaac, L pg.

Mental illness is and has always been a serious topic. But it has not always been taken as serious in the black community. From my research, scholars and medical professionals in the field of mental health spoke on the fact that mental illness is a stigma in the black community and the conversation of this is not happening. There are many factors that contributed to this. Factors such as the distrust of medical professionals, mis-diagnosis, socio-economical factors and so much more contribute to the reason the black community is missed when it comes to mental health. I also discovered the inside factors that were culture, religion, mis-education, and family reliance. This also becomes why it is a stigma or why it’s not talked about amongst everyone in the community.

David R. Williams and Ruth Williams Morris write in “Racism and Mental Health: The African American Experience” that negative attitudes of white Americans resulting in the formation of racist policies contribute to mental health problems for African Americans, as they attempt to cope. Mental health issues, Williams and William Morris continues, can be a consequence of living within a lower income bracket with decreasing prospects for future improvement, an inability to attain needed “resources” e.g. the choice between prescription medications and food, or finally, internalizing the damaging opinions.

African-Americans are likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia since they are likely to encounter stigma and victimization from clinicians, other African-Americans without mental illnesses, and other races. African-American are likely to avoid psychotherapy. Instead of relying on psychotherapy for treatment of mental illnesses, African-Americans rely on religion and spiritual beliefs to cope with the stressors of life such as depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, or diagnosable mental illnesses. African-Americans view the church as an institution to provide them with social, economic and political resources and to relieve them from oppression and discrimination (Plunkett, 2014).

In the Black Community, various health and social problems are ignored by its members. These include, but are not limited to, mental illness, crime rates amongst blacks, communication amongst family members etc. One of the more prominent of the problems ignored by members of the black community is mental illness. There are numerous reasons as to why it is ignored, although every 1 in 5 African Americans are facing a mental illness. One example that was given in the memoir Buck, was MK Asante’s mother, Amina, and as the journal is read, it is shown to see how mental illness can affect people.

The African American community has experienced a history of oppression, racism, discrimination, and trauma, which has affected their culture, identity, and worldview (Hays & Erford, 2014). Furthermore, there is a significant amount of stigma surrounding mental health and treatment, as well as, distrust of the mental health community. These factors may contribute to the treatment issues members of this population may present with and serve to discourage them from seeking treatment. In order to provide appropriate and effective services, culturally competent professional counselors must be knowledgeable about these issues, be mindful of them when providing services, take steps to lessen the effects of racism and discrimination which have impacted

Article Review 2 results stated that overall every day discrimination showed higher odds of any psychiatric disorder, anxiety, mood and more lifetime DSM- IV disorders. Furthermore it tends to agree with Article review one, in that, depression is a major factor for the older African American.

Once the community has established an understanding about mental health and ways to prevent negative results, then one can evaluate how the African American community experiences mental health problems on a cultural, social and economic basis. It is important to put ideals into perspective, so breaking it down into statistics will give a better picture in understanding how many African Americans are affected by mental health problems. There are 13.3% of people in the United States that identify as Black or African American (U.S. Census Bureau, 2016). Out of that 13.3% of African Americans, approximately 16% or more have had a diagnosable mental illness in the past year, which is estimated to be over 6.8 billion African American/ Black people. The National Alliance of Mental Health declares that “African Americans are 20% more likely to experience mental health problems than the general population,” (Mental Health America, 2017). Depression, Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and suicide (prominent among young African American men) are the most common disorders that Blacks may encounter. Other disorders faced by African American Communities could include Alcohol/substance abuse, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, and postpartum depression.

Health care for mental illness is an issue in the African American community for Men, Women and Adolescents due to the underserving and lack of mental healthcare providers, the cultural stigma of having mental illness and

When experiencing a mental illness, African Americans face obstacles “related to understanding the problem or situation and limitation in awareness of possible solutions, strategies remedies and resources” (Hines-Martin, Malone, Kim, & Brown-Piper, 2003). In a study by Hines-Martin (2003), participants verbalized that they did not think they were “crazy” and therefore did not need mental health services. In this instance participants showed a lack of knowledge about what mental health illness looks like. They identified mental illness as dichotomous states (Hines-Martin et al., 2003). A study by Mental Health America found similar results. In this study, a majority of African Americans surveyed believed that depression was a “health problem” and in some cases “normal” (MHA, 2012). Talking about mental illness is taboo for African Americans, and as a result they possess little knowledge about specific mental health problems or available treatments (Alvidrez et al., 2008). For African Americans, stigma serves as an impediment to problem recognition. Because they have a misconstrued idea of what mental illness is, they are less likely to contemplate that they have such problems. Alvidrez (2008) found that stigma prevented 65% of their survey respondents from contemplating that they had such problems. Because many African Americans are uninformed about what mental illness is and how it

Per Vaterlaus, Skogrand, & Chaney (2015) studies have shown that African Americans reaching out for mental health services are perceived to be powerless or weak, and are often humiliated and feel embarrassed. In a study performed by (Ward, Wiltshire, Detry & Brown (2013) African Americans were found to be hesitant to confess any mental health problems and were more likely to cope using religious practices. In my opinion, African Americans are connected to

For the expert-consensus diagnoses, clinicians looked at the structured interviews and medical records of the patients. Strakowski determined that there are minimal differences in first-rank symptoms between African-American and Caucasian patients when clinicians are blinded by ethnicity/race. There were 79 patients that met DSM-IV criteria for an affective disorder, 40 identifying themselves as Caucasian or White and 39 identifying themselves as African-American. The expert-consensus diagnoses revealed the presence of first-rank symptoms in 55% of the White patients and 62% of the African-American patients. However, despite these minimal differences, it was found that during the structural interviews, African-American patients were more likely to be diagnosed with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder than their white counterparts (Strakowski et al., 1996). Therefore, the overdiagnosis of schizophrenia cannot be attributed to the presence of these first-rank symptoms.

With the way most African-Americans carry themselves you would not be able to tell which ones have poor mental health; but only a few seek help for their mental health issues. African-Americans poor state of mental health is believed to stem from the 200 years of oppression; from slavery to where we are now, many things were put in place to stop the progression of the African- American people both mind and body. For example the right to vote, stopping it with the literacy tests and the grandfather clause. Throughout the years African-Americans have gained more, influencing them physically and

Anyone can develop a mental illness at any given time in their life. Mental illness does not have a set onset date and time or an expiration date.  African Americans encounter more severe forms of mental illness due to lack of resources and barriers. According to the American Psychiatric Association, mental health disorders are common in the United States. Every year, about 45 million people suffer from at least one diagnosed mental disorder. However, African American adults are 20 percent more likely to experience serious psychological distress than any other ethnicity. Common mental illnesses among African Americans include suicide, especially in Black men, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD),